Assessing Ukrainian Counteroffensives
Russia appears to be making advances towards encirclement of Avdievka, and to be pushing forward to Kupiansk. Progress in the Marinka and Vuhledar area appears to have tapered off, both because of weather, and because of a redeployment of Russian forces from this area in order to reinforce action in Avdievka. In Bakhmut,where some but not all reports suggest that Russia now controls the Azom plant close to the city centrer, the situation looks trickier. Poor weather appears to have delayed any Ukrainian attempt to break through the Russian cauldron to relieve Ukrainian forces in the center of the city, assuming that there will be such an attempt. Wagner estimates of Ukrainian troop numbers in the area lend support to the idea that Ukraine may be intending a counteroffensive once the weather has cleared, something that Ukrainian commanders are themselves saying and which Wagner is warning of. Wagner estimates a total of 80,000 Ukrainian troops and 250 artillery and tanks in Donbass, including a small number of Leopard IIs. Otherwise, TASS correspondents do not report massive presence of western-supplied equipment here. A proportion of the total troop numbers (perhaps 10,000) are presumably in the Bakhmut garrison. It is unlikely that all the remainder would be deployed to a Bakhmut breakthrough offensive, but something significant is still possible, perhaps even to be expected.
It could be that such a local offensive on Bakhmut might be accompanied by a larger counter-offensive from Zaporizhzhia, where concentrations of Ukrainian forces have been reported, along with a concentration near Dnipro.
Such a scenario would have the optics of an epic, last-ditch attempt by Ukraine to turn matters around in its favor, and which would exploit the most recent arrivals (or promised arrivals) of western weaponry. On the whole, this is less imposing than it tends to sound. In his broadcast today, Alexander Mercouris addresses what he sees as the rather ragged mixture of western supplies that appears to be intended for availability for Ukraine’s much anticipated big offensive this spring or early summer (he considers but dismisses the likelihood of a postponment of this to the fall).
For example, the EU has promised a million 155mm rounds of shells, over the next year. Were this to be used in the next four months, say, to coincide with the period in which Ukraine would most likely unleash its counteroffensive(s), whether macro or local, then we would be talking about 250,000 shells a month, or just over 8,000 shells a day. But 8,000 shells is less than half of the 20,000 shells fired by Russia on an average day (and this sometimes goes up to 40,000, even 60,000 a day).
Poland and Slovakia have promised a squadron’s worth of mostly rather old (some very old) MiG 29 fighter jets. These will hardly be a match against Russia’s more modern Sukoi jets or its advanced air defense systems. The same applies to the 10 aging Mirage 2000 fighter jets that France is offering. It does not seem likely that the total number of Leopard II tanks to be supplied from Germany, Poland and elsewhere (or that have already arrived) will much exceed 50; the remaining Leopards will be World War One variety, of which there will be around 90. The US has decided to make “early generation” Abrams tanks available; these are 1980s technology, with difficult-to-maintain gas turbine engines, and are unlikely to offer significant competition to Russia’s T90Ms. Britain is likely to provide 14 Challenger tanks along with depleted uranium shells - a “dirty bomb'“ further escalation of the war (crossing Russian red lines) that has excited very critical attention in the international media.
Russia meantime is producing a minumum of 20 new advanced T90M tanks, and a further 80 refurbished older tanks a month, while Dimitri Medvedev, deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council and its Industry Committee, has talked of newly ramped up provision of 1,300 new tanks a year. As we have seen in recentr posts, Russia has greatly concentrated its fortifications behind the front line. It has far larger manpower resources than Ukraine. Overall, in fact, Russia can be said to have quantitiatively superior and often qualitatively superior tanks, air defense systems, artillery and shells.